Teaching Jane Eyre

Herbert J. Rosengarten,
Formerly, Head of the Department of English, University of British
Columbia (Canada)

N. B. This article originally appeared in the British Columbia
English Teachers' Association (BCTELA) quarterly journal Update
in the September/October, 1985, issue (pp. 5-6); it is based on a paper
that Professor Rosengarten gave at the BCETA conference the previous
spring. Since the novel Jane Eyre had recently been added to the
academic English 12 curriculum in the province, teachers were eagerly
looking for both resources and approaches.

Though biographical approaches are not fashionable these days, a
good way to begin discussion of Jane Eyre is to provide students
with some facts about the author, to show that the sources of the
narrator's experiences and strong personality lie in Charlotte Brontë's
personal history. Points worth emphasizing in relation to Jane
Eyre include the early death of Charlotte's mother, leaving the
family in the care of a somewhat remote father and a crotchety aunt
(all Charlotte's novels have parentless heroines); her experiences at
the Clergy Daughters' school at Cowan Bridge [Yorkshire], thinly veiled
in the novel as Lowood Institution; her attempts to make a living as a
governess in wealthy families; and her suppressed (and possibly
unconscious) passion for Constantine Heger, her tempestuous and
irascible teacher in Brussels. Students would also be interested to
learn about the imaginary worlds created by the Brontës as children;
Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne collaborated for many years on the
production of chronicles of romance and adventure for their own
amusement. Charlotte's favourite character in the stories was Arthur
Wellesley, Duke of Zamorna, a romantic hero compounded of her reading
in Gothic novels and the poetry of Byron. Zamorna is a clear forerunner
of Edward Fairfax Rochester.

For teaching purposes, Jane Eyre conveniently breaks down
into five sections: Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield, Moor House, and
Ferndean, each section representing a new phase in Jane's experience
and development. It's worth spending some time on the first two
sections: a) they establish the protagonist's character very clearly
(intense, imaginative, passionate, rebellious, independent˝yet yearning
for warmth and affection, seeking acceptance and an out let for her
feelings); b) these early chapters prepare us for the struggles that
Jane will undergo later, the conflicts between spirit and flesh, duty
and desire, denial and fulfilment; c) they also establish the theme of
the outsider, the free spirit struggling for recognition and self-
respect in the face of rejection by a class-ridden and money-oriented
society. The Gateshead chapters can be used to introduce the concept of
narrative point-of-view. Of special interest is the author's ability to
re-create the child's vision of the world; ask students to pick out
passages they think successfully convey the child's perception, and
have them explain their choices.

The Lowood section can be dealt with in part as a realistic, if
somewhat heightened, account of life in many charitable or religious
schools in the first part of the 19th century (cf. Dickens' description
of Dotheboys Hall in Nicholas Nickleby). Students would probably
enjoy Mrs. Gaskell's scathing account of Lowood's real-life original,
the Clergy Daughters' school run by a fiercely evangelical clergyman
similar in some
respects to Mr. Brocklehurst. This section is important also for its
introduction of the theme of Christian love and forgiveness; the
contrast between Mr. Brocklehurst's hypocritical zeal and Helen Burns'
spiritual strength and humility is an important lesson for Jane,
bearing fruit in her subsequent forgiveness of Mrs. Reed.

The Thornfield episode, with its elements of suspense, sexual
conflict, and occasional violence, has obvious appeal for most
adolescent readers. It is dominated by Rochester; students might be
asked to define those features of his character and conduct that make
him the Romantic Hero par excellence. Milton's Satan and Byron's Lara
are probably his most illustrious antecedents, and offer useful
parallels. The section is important also in developing the theme of
spiritual equality regardless of social rank; not a new theme (cf.
Chaucer's treatment of "gentilesse" in "The Wife of Bath's Tale"), but
asserted with unusual force here, leading some readers to see Jane (and
her creator) in feminist terms. Jane's aggressively independent nature
certainly seemed unwomanly (and unChristian) to some of her
contemporaries, if one goes by early reviews. This part of the novel
also brings to a climax the theme of moral conflict: Jane's struggle
between passion and principle, the flesh and the spirit. Some attention
should be paid to poor Bertha, who embodies the irrational abandonment
of self to appetite, and whose fiery passions eventually find literal
expression. (For a more sympathetic view of Bertha, see Jean Rhys'
novel Wide Sargasso Sea, which relates the story of her meeting
with Rochester in the West Indies.) The Thornfield chapters are useful,
too, for discussions of setting as dramatic accompaniment to,
reflection of, or comment upon the action; e.g., Thornfield Hall as an
expression of its master's personality; or the violent storm that
erupts at the time of Rochester's proposal to Jane, seemingly as a
reflection of divine disapproval.

The sexual temptations offered by Rochester are contrasted in the
Moor House section by the cold spirituality of St. John Rivers (a
helpful assignment here is a comparison-contrast essay). In the
interests of serving God, he represses his own human feelings (note the
Rosamund Oliver business), and wants Jane to do the same. He represents
the extremes of denial, self-sacrifice, dedication to the spirit; in
rejecting him, Jane chooses the path of life˝a life in which passion
and principle are reconciled, through her happy marriage with
Rochester. The final scenes at Ferndean show the achievement of this
reconciliation; Rochester, now maimed (divine retribution? See Matthew
5:29, 30), repents his former life, and Jane can find fulfilment in
loving service to a master who now depends on her.

Despite its episodic nature, Jane Eyre does have
thematic and structural unity, created in various ways: through the
continuous development of Jane's character and the revelation of her
inner struggles; through recurring themes, some of which have been
outlined above; through repeated motifs, symbols, and images (the
workings of the supernatural, portentous dreams, patterns of light and
dark, oppositions of warmth and cold, etc.); through parallels and
contrasts in character (e. g., the Reeds at Gateshead/the Rivers family
at Moor House; Rochester/St. John Rivers; Helen Burns/St. John Rivers;
Blanche Ingram/Jane herself); and through patterns in plot structure
(e. g., the workings of Providence at several crucial stages in Jane's
life; the parallel temptations facing Jane at Thornfield and Moor
House; Jane's search for happiness as a kind of spiritual journey in
which she must overcome a series of trials and obstacles like Christian
in The Pilgrim's Progress). Students might also be encouraged to
look at fairy-tale analogues of the novel's plot: e. g., the stories of
Cinderella, Bluebeard, or the Ugly Duckling.

There are several film versions of Jane Eyre [and a several
more have been made since the writing of this article in 1985]. My own
favourite is the 1943 production with Orson Welles as Rochester, Joan
Fontaine as Jane, and Elizabeth Taylor as an improbably healthy and
pretty Helen Burns. Sadly, the screenplay (co-authored by Aldous
Huxley) cuts out the whole of the Moor House section, but it preserves
the Gothic mood of the novel better than other [pre-1985] versions. A
comparison of film and novel would certainly provoke some lively
discussion. [Ed. Note: Though not readily accessible, John Brougham's
1856b adaptation of the novel, printed as Number 400 in the Dicks'
Standard Plays series, would be interesting as the subject of a
readers' theatre.]

Bibliographical note:

The earliest account of the Brontë family, and in many ways still
the best, despite its errors and omissions, is Elizabeth Gaskell's
The Life Charlotte Brontë, commissioned by Charlotte's father
soon after her death; the Penguin edition edited by Alan Shelston has
an excellent introduction. A useful supplement to the Life is
Margaret's Lane's The Brontë Story. The best modern biography is
Winifred Gerin's Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius. For
the early reviews, see The Brontës: The Critical Heritage, ed.
Miriam Allott. Good discussions of the novel include R. B. Martin's
The Accents of Persuasion: Charlotte Brontë's Novels; Kathleen
Tillotson's Novels of the Eighteen-Forties; David Lodge's
chapter on "Fire and Eyre: Charlotte Brontë's War of Earthly Elements,"
in his Language of Fiction. [Ed. Note: Almost a bible to
Feminist critics of the work of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and
Jane Austen is Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in
the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary
Imagination (1979).] The best paperback edition of Jane Eyre
is edited by Margaret Smith, published in the World's Classics series
by Oxford University Press; its introduction and notes are first-rate.
A comprehensive survey of Charlotte Brontë's life and writings may be
found in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 21
(Victorian Novels before 1885): 25-54 [Ed. Note: This well-illustrated
article was written by Professor Rosengarten himself.].